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Hillary Clinton said her “skin crawled” as Donald Trump loomed behind her at a presidential debate in St. Louis, and added that she wished she could have pressed pause and asked America, “Well, what would you do?”
The words, Clinton’s most detailed public comments about what happened during one of the campaign’s more memorable moments, are included in her new book, “What Happened,” which she called an attempt to “pull back the curtain” on her losing bid for the presidency.
Some of the moments during the campaign, she said, “baffled” her. Others seemingly repulsed her: In recounting the October incident, she referred to Trump as a “creep.”
The book comes out Sept. 12, but audio excerpts, read by Clinton, were played Wednesday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
In the recording, Clinton noted that she wrote about moments from the campaign that she wanted to remember forever — as well as others she wished she could “go back and do over.”
The moment from the debate appeared to fall into the latter category.
“This is not okay, I thought,” Clinton said, reading from her book. “It was the second presidential debate and Donald Trump was looming behind me. Two days before, the world heard him brag about groping women. Now we were on a small stage and no matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces.
“It was incredibly uncomfortable. He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled. It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching, ‘Well, what would you do?’ Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye and say loudly and clearly, ‘Back up, you creep. Get away from me. I know you love to intimidate women, but you can’t intimidate me, so back up.’”
The debate took place two days after Trump was heard bragging about groping, kissing and trying to have sex with women on the “Access Hollywood” tape — comments made in 2005 on an apparent hot mic.
Afterward, some Republican critics said Trump should drop out of the race. But he ended a video response to the years-old tape’s release by saying: “See you at the debate on Sunday.”
Trump’s actions during the debate were viewed as bullying even before the moment that Clinton recounted.
As The Post’s Sarah L. Kaufman wrote, Trump “paced and rocked and grimaced as spoke; he broke into her time by shouting over her. When she protested that she had not done the same to him, he shot back with all the finesse you’d hear in a middle school gym: ‘That’s ’cause you got nothin’ to say.’
“When it was his turn to speak, Trump got angry, pointed at her, swung his arms around with alarming force.”
[What two body language experts saw at the second presidential debate]
His actions were widely mocked and criticized after the debate, and even featured in a “Saturday Night Live” skit that showed him zooming toward an unsuspecting Clinton.
“If a man did that to me on the street … I’d call 911,” political commentator and former Republican strategist Nicolle Wallace said, according to NBC News.
The New York Daily News headline the day after the debate read: “Grab a seat, loser.”
In the post-debate spin room, Clinton surrogates accused Trump of “menacingly stalking” the Democratic nominee. Two body language experts analyzed the debate and concluded Trump was trying to assert his power by roaming the stage while Clinton spoke.
“Trump’s constant pacing and restless movements around the stage attracted attention from Hillary’s words, and visually disrespected her physical presence on the stage, as in ‘I am big, you are small,’ ” David Givens, director of the Center for Nonverbal Studies, a nonprofit research center in Spokane, Wash., told The Post then.
Clinton said in the audio clip played on MSNBC that “What Happened” is not a comprehensive account of the 2016 race — and that it was difficult to write.
“Every day that I was a candidate for president, I knew that millions of people were counting on me, and I couldn’t bear the idea of letting them down — but I did,” she said. “I couldn’t get the job done, and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.”
Simon Schuster, the book’s publisher, says “What Happened” is Clinton’s “most personal memoir yet.”
“In the past, for reasons I try to explain, I’ve often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net,” she writes in the introduction. “Now I’m letting my guard down.”
Immediately after the election, Clinton kept a low profile, though she was occasionally spotted hiking in the woods by her Chappaqua, N.Y., neighbors; SNL even poked fun at the hubbub surrounding her sylvan whereabouts in a sketch called “The Hunt for Hil.”
In recent months, Clinton has slowly reemerged in the public eye, making speeches and giving interviews in which she addressed the historic election.
It’s unclear how much Clinton was paid for writing “What Happened.” Simon Schuster representatives did not immediately respond to questions sent by email early Wednesday.
The publisher never publicly disclosed how much Clinton received for her 2014 book, “Hard Choices,” though in 2000, Clinton reportedly was paid about $8 million in advance to write a memoir (eventually titled “Living History”) about her years as first lady, according to the New York Times.
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President Trump’s threat to shut down the federal government over his demand for $1.6 billion in border wall money could upend delicate negotiations on Capitol Hill to keep the government open and funded past Sept. 30, further entrenching Democrats against what they see as an unpopular president scrambling to appeal to his base of supporters.
During a campaign rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night, Trump leveled his latest threat about blocking new government funding if it doesn’t include the $1.6 billion he wants to partially construct a new wall along the Mexico border.
“Build that wall,” he said. “Now the obstructionist Democrats would like us not to do it. But believe me, if we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall.”
Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, are holding their ground in opposition to Trump’s proposal. On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) repeated their objections to funding a wall and argued that Trump would be responsible if the government shuts down over the impasse.
“If the President pursues this path, against the wishes of both Republicans and Democrats, as well as the majority of the American people, he will be heading towards a government shutdown which nobody will like and which won’t accomplish anything,” Schumer said in a statement.
Trump’s threat Tuesday night during a campaign-style rally in Phoenix instantly raised the stakes for the showdown over government spending that awaits lawmakers. Federal spending authority expires in a little more than a month, requiring Congress to act to keep the government fully operating past Sept. 30.
[Trump threatens shutdown, suggests controversial pardon at Arizona rally]
Many Republicans are hoping to include border wall funding in any deal to keep the government open, and key conservative lawmakers have rallied to Trump’s side. But Democrats on Wednesday showed no sign of backing down.
“Last night, President Trump yet again threatened to cause chaos in the lives of millions of Americans if he doesn’t get his way,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Make no mistake: The President said he will purposefully hurt American communities to force American taxpayers to fund an immoral, ineffective and expensive border wall.”
Trump, escalating a conflict that has been brewing for months, told supporters Tuesday night: “Let me be very clear to Democrats in Congress who oppose a border wall and stand in the way of border security: You are putting all of America’s safety at risk.”
During the presidential campaign last year, Trump vowed to force Mexico to build a wall along the U.S. border that he said could be as much as 50 feet tall. Since the election, he has changed course, saying that Congress instead needs to authorize $1.6 billion for the next fiscal year to begin construction of parts of the wall. There is already a wall or fence along parts of the U.S. border with Mexico.
The Department of Homeland Security prepared an internal report earlier this year that estimated the cost of constructing a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border would be $21.6 billion. Trump has chafed at that estimate, saying he could get the cost to come “way down.”
On Wednesday, a committee that raises money for Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee sent an email to supporters calling on them to pressure Senate lawmakers that “the American VOTERS want this beautiful, impenetrable wall constructed.”
It went on to ask supporters to digitally sign an “Official Build The Wall Petition.”
Neither Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) nor House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has weighed in yet on Trump’s remarks, but some prominent conservative lawmakers are urging Republicans to support the president.
“Congress would do well to join the President by keeping our own commitments and including border wall funding in upcoming spending measures,” Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) wrote on Twitter before Tuesday’s rally.
[As Trump ranted and rambled in Phoenix, his crowd slowly thinned]
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), another influential voice within the group, repeated the same message. “Secure borders are vital to natl security — Congress shld fund border wall in govt funding legislation this fall — time to keep our promise,” he tweeted Tuesday.
Rasmussen Reports, a Republican firm, conducted a poll of likely U.S. voters late last month and found that a solid majority of Americans oppose building a border wall, with 37 percent supporting Trump’s proposal versus 56 percent against. That is largely unchanged from a poll conducted in February by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center that found Americans opposed the wall 62 percent to 35 percent.
House Republicans voted last month to provide the $1.6 billion in seed funding for the border wall as part of a larger spending package. That bill is expected to be taken up in the Senate, where Democrats can filibuster any measure that funds the wall or includes other GOP provisions that they have termed “poison pills.”
A 2017 spending bill passed into law earlier this year did not include border wall funding after Democrats refused to accept it. That impasse increased pressure on Republicans to deliver wall funding in a future spending battle.
Democrats uniformly slammed Trump’s remarks, with several calling the president’s speech “unhinged” on Twitter.
Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, called Trump’s threat the “polar opposite of leadership” and said the president should be held accountable if the government shuts down.
“Wasting tens of billions on a useless and immoral border wall is a nonstarter for Democrats, particularly at a time of such real need in our communities. Congress should use this funding to help American families — not fulfill campaign applause lines,” Lowey said Wednesday in a statement.
Rank-and-file Democrats and several caucuses representing them took to Twitter Tuesday to double down on that position.
“Threatening to shut down the gov’t for a campaign promise and a wall we don’t need is irresponsible and reckless,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.), the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, tweeted from an account representing the panel’s Democrats.
Tweeted the Congressional Hispanic Caucus: “Trump irresponsibly vows to shut down govt if his immoral, ineffective unnecessary #borderwall isn’t funded by the American taxpayer.”
Trump could follow through on his threat to shut down the government by blocking any funding bill sent to the White House by Congress. If he doesn’t sign a funding bill, or if vetoes one, it would lead to a partial government shutdown. This means that national parks would shut down, many federal agencies would suspend certain operations, and hundreds of thousands of federal workers would be sent home indefinitely without pay.
The last government shutdown came from Oct. 1 until Oct. 17, 2013, when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) led a conservative revolt against the Affordable Care Act.
The number of federal employees placed on furlough during that shutdown peaked at 850,000 workers, with federal employees losing a total of 6.6 million work days, the Obama administration said at the time. Economists also believe that the shutdown negatively impacted economic growth, though they disagree on precisely how much.
Federal workers are typically repaid for their lost wages during a shutdown,but it can cause strain while they wait for lawmakers to sort out differences.
Last week, Goldman Sachs issued a research note estimating that there was a 50 percent chance that Trump could lead the country into a government shutdown.
“Low approval ratings raise legislative risks,” Goldman Sachs analysts wrote. “In the near term, we believe there is a 50% chance of a brief government shutdown, as the president seeks to solidify support among his base by embracing more controversial positions, despite needing Democratic support to pass spending legislation.”
Read more at PowerPost
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